blessed in the ganges river

holly cow, i cannot believe i made it here to haridwar. i got off of the bus here at six in the morning and we found a hotel right away. im really exhausted since these last two days have been ridiculous, im so sleep deprived i can hardly think straight anymore, i just wander around running through the motions of trying to not get scammed out of my rupees. in agra we woke up at sunrise to watch it hit the taj mahal, and it was one of the most mindblowing things i have seen in a very long time. we hung around the taj for about three hours taking pictures and wandering the gardens. the pictures will hardly be able to do it justice, especially since it was probably 90 degress and sunny, with a fountain to dip your fit in, i didn't even want to leave. later on in that day after eating at this one roof top restaurant called the taj cafe, where we ended up eatting three times that day because it was so delicious and cheap, we decided to go see the agra red fort. not as amazing as the taj but amazing non the less. this for spanned miles and had marble mosques, galleries, and auditoriums. it also had fourty foot walls behind a mot to keep enemies out when the moghuls were occupying this fort. a lot of really great historic sites are in agra, yet we had not enough time to see them all.

later that eve, we got a sleeper bus to haridwar, which is where i am now. haridwar is a city at the base of the himalya's where the ganges river emerges. it has beautiful scenery and lots of the people are very nice. we will probably leave here tomorrow because we have done all the necesary sight seeing that we want to do. we walked up a mountain path to a hidi temple and participated in the ceremonies a little bit, the views from this temple were quit amazing and spanned so very far. then after around seven we went to a famous ghat on the ganges river. there were thousands of hindi pilgrims here that came just to bathe and cleanse in the river. its quite a sight to see i must say, you buy a little boat made of flowers go down some steps into the river, light it on fire and the send it on its way. you also are also supposed to say prayers and what not, but for me not knowing any hindi that becomes a little difficult. we did get scammed by a guy saying he was taking the donations for the event, when in actuality the place where you do give donations was about fifty meters away. aw shucks, fifty rupees...so about one dollar. while walking to the internet cafe where i sit now, we met some kids are age from delhi and one worked for the police station. super nice kids, of course wanted to take pictures of us, being the weird westerners in an all indian country. they also gave us their phone number for when we get back to delhi before we fly out, they said we could stay at their families home if we like, and they would show us around the town. the sincerity in this gesture blew me away and i can still not get it out of my head as i sit here typing. i might have to take them up on that offer, because that would be a once in a lifetime experience.

well tomorrow we head out to a town by shimla and we may try to grab the toy train up in the mountains. relive some of the darjeeling limited in a fashion. its so weird, the way that i speak to people has changed drastically over the last week. when you have to purposefully speak very backwards and broken english so these indians will understand it, you have a hard time stopping. i have caught myself saying some very backwards ass shit lately, hopefully ill write something down one time so i can recall it. it will probably be a couple days before i can get to a computer, but i hope everyone is doing very well back in mpls.

peace

j a k e

p.s. sorry for the lack of capital letters, the shift key is broken.